Republicans Call for Halt to Syrian Refugee Program

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. Mr. Ryan has called for the suspension of a program to accept Syrian refugees into the United States.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Seizing on the terrorist attacks in Paris, congressional Republicans on Tuesday demanded the suspension of a program to accept Syrian refugees in the United States, but along with Democrats, they continued to shy away from explicit authorization of military force to confront the Islamic State.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin was the leading voice in his party urging an immediate halt to the refugee program. More than two dozen Republican governors are pledging to try to block the entry of Syrian refugees, and all the Republican presidential candidates have called for barring the refugees entirely or limiting the group to Christians.

President Obama, on a trip to Manila, expressed outrage at what he called “political posturing” by Republicans on the issue, accusing them of making statements that the Islamic State could use as a recruiting tool.

“When candidates say we should not admit 3-year-old orphans, that’s political posturing,” the president said. “When individuals say we should have religious tests, and only Christians, proven Christians, should be allowed, that’s offensive and contrary to American values.”

Mr. Obama said that such comments could help the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, because they suggest that the United States does not believe that Muslims are as valuable as adherents of other religions.

“ISIL seeks to exploit the idea that there’s war between Islam and the West, and when you start seeing individuals in a position of responsibility suggesting Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land, that feeds the ISIL narrative,” he said.

The Republican demands raised the possibility that legislation temporarily barring the admission of Syrian refugees could be attached to a spending measure that Congress must pass before Dec. 11 to avoid a government shutdown. Republicans said they had not yet settled on a legislative strategy.

“Our nation has always been welcoming,” Mr. Ryan said at a news conference. “But we cannot allow terrorists to take advantage of our compassion. This is a moment where it is better to be safe than to be sorry. So we think the prudent, the responsible thing is to take a pause in this particular aspect of this refugee program in order to verify that terrorists are not trying to infiltrate the refugee population.”

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, also endorsed a suspension of the program, which has brought only small numbers of Syrians to the United States and, Democrats noted, only after a lengthy screening process. The administration has pledged to take in up to 10,000 additional Syrian migrants.

“We’re going to continue to have refugees as long as Syria looks like it does, and so what we need is a strategy, obviously, to give the refugees an opportunity to stay in their own country,” Mr. McConnell said.

A few Democrats, including Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, also indicated that the refugee program might need to be halted.

Over all, however, Democrats said robust screening measures were in place. “We should continue to accept refugees under the rigorous standards that have been set up,” Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey said.

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The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it had no intention of backing away from the refugee plan. In a series of tense exchanges with Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said a “significant and robust” vetting process would identify any security threats.

That process will include not only searches of domestic and foreign intelligence databases for information on possible terrorist threats, she said, but also interviews with all applicants, as well as fingerprinting and biometric testing.

Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, and other top administration officials held a 90-minute conference call on Tuesday with 34 governors to answer questions and try to ease concerns about the plan.

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On the issue of authorizing force in Syria, Congress has been deeply conflicted for more than two years, preferring to let the administration grapple for a strategy on its own. That view seemed to prevail on Tuesday even as two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona — renewed their call for Congress to vote on a measure authorizing force.

Senate Republican leaders asserted that it was up to Mr. Obama to put forward a more coherent strategy, while Democrats said they wanted to wait until a classified briefing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon before deciding if there was a need for new legislation to confront the Islamic State.

“It’s pretty obvious that ISIL is not contained, and it’s pretty obvious they’re not the J.V. team,” Mr. McConnell said at a news conference, alluding to a characterization of the group that Mr. Obama made in January 2014. “This is a serious threat. The president still has not laid out a strategy for dealing with this.”

The general inaction in Congress reflects both a nation weary of war and the inherent peril of taking any firm position on the quagmire in Syria, which has no obvious solution.

A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2015, on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Republicans Want to Suspend Program Accepting Syrian Refugees. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe